Map applications are a popular type of application, with a variety of uses. For example, a user may use a map application to determine directions, or may use the map application to determine restaurants, banks, drugstores, and other businesses near a current location. Map applications are commonly integrated into smartphones, tablets, and vehicle navigation systems, and may be accessed by any computing device though the Internet.
One popular use for map applications is to view images (e.g., photographs) from a user's personal image collection. Icons representing the images are arranged on the map based on locations associated with each image. Where the images are photographs, the location may be the location where each photograph was taken.
Some current map applications allow users to explore maps from a variety of perspectives by changing a zoom level of the map, changing an orientation of the map, and changing a viewing angle of map. Typically, in response to such changes, the features of the map such as roads, buildings, trees, etc., are also changed to help orient the user and to provide an enhanced user experience. For example, if the user rotates the map by 90 degrees, the representations of buildings that are visible to the user may also be rotated 90 degrees.
In contrast, images typically remain static in response to user changes to the map. For example, map applications may represent images using icons, or other static features, that may be clicked or selected by the user to view the associated image. If, after selecting an icon to view the associated image, the user makes a change to the map such as changing the orientation, the associated image is either removed from the map before the change is applied to the features of the map, or the associated image remains unchanged as the change is applied to the features of the map.